Tremulous
by Fledgling
Summary: [Giftfic for kalliel. Prompt: inhibitions. Features Light and L, oneshot.] It got better, after a while.


For: Kalliel: Death Note, "inhibitions"

Word count: 1, 663

"… murdered, but it was made to look like a suicide. He's been down in the basement for a few days, at least, I think. It doesn't look…"

L sat, uncomfortably scrunched up in a hard wooden chair at one end of an enormous dining table. His long toes arched, tensely, against the mahogany. The two investigators sat on the opposite end, facing each other, excluding L as he slashed his red velvet cake in half and spooned it barbarically into his mouth. It made him feel bloated. He didn't seem to be able to chew properly, and his stomach wasn't digesting right. L felt sick, but he continued eating, while listening to the details of the murder. His _first_ murder case.

Victim was bruised. Lips were black, and sort of dusty and smooth.

L immediately thought of newspapers, his fingers shiny after leafing through them, and reading every single advert, article, and announcement.

Then, according to the investigator with the patch of white hair mushrooming from the centre of his head, he was thrown on the ground and whacked in the back of his head. The victim became unconscious? the other investigator inquired. What was he hit with? The one asking questions had shiny chestnut hair, clearly dyed. He was too old for that, L thought. He frowned faintly, then readjusted his expression. He could feel them watching him. They must have been, because L was watching _them_.

We're not sure yet, the older investigator replied. We can tell that he didn't hang himself because there were marks of violence all over him: scratches, bruises, and many of them were in places where he couldn't...

He heard, rather than saw or feel, the older investigator glance at L, fork busy piling cream in one corner. The spaces in front of _them_ were scattered with photographs and post-it-notes with observations and speculations; in front of L, there was a pot of tea, a plate of sugar cubes, a decorated mug, and a large slice of cake. His notepad was blank, and the pen hadn't been uncapped. He stared back at them, eyes wide, eyebrows up, the way he always looked, and met the murky blue gaze of the older investigator. L swallowed. Maintaining eye contact, he gulped down tea, cringing inwardly when it burned his tongue, but belying no expression in his round, round eyes.

And then L opened his mouth.

It took him a moment longer than it usually did, to speak, as he began the intense, mind-boggling task of assuming the mind of the killer. He was overcome with a swampy feeling in his gut, tea whooshing across the sides of his stomach, and he shifted his thighs a little closer into his body. His toes, cold and sweaty, curled up, bottoms of feet cramping up. It felt like his jaw, now, sore from a tenseness he hadn't realized he possessed until he began to eat. L felt awful. He could imagine himself strangling the victim, smashing the other's head into the ground, creating that messy noose with uncooperative fingers. He was in a rush, so he hit the victim, over and over again, until he stopped trying to escape, and stuffed newspaper in his mouth to keep him quiet. L's thoughts meandered; he was killing because he wanted this man to die, because he was a menace to society... but no, that wasn't the case. Pain intensified in his intestines. Or was it his stomach? Both. Otherwise, the killer wouldn't have hit him, wouldn't have inflicted mindless, probably unnecessary violence on the victim. No, he hated him, and he had unreleased anger inside. L recreated the sensation of loathing, anger that shot through all his muscles and screamed for agony, to release the agony trapped inside. He remembered _himself_, wanting to pull away from the destructive emotions, and struggled with the concept of _L_, who would never do that to another.

He explained, calmly, his interpretation of the sequence of events. He listed possible details about the murderer, all educated guesses with backing from the photographs and suspects and details of the incident that he'd studied beforehand, a base upon which complexities intensified. He was chillingly serene, like answering a question from his Math tutor. Yes, L _was_ calm; because to the investigators, he was perceived as peaceful, and in the end, that was all anyone would remember. Ultimately, it was all that mattered.

L held his plate up to his lips, and noisily brushed cream-covered crumbs into his mouth. He slurped noisily from his teacup, and poured himself more. His abdomen, if he'd bothered to pay attention, was a cement mixer, and his feet were icy and damp.

It got better, after a while.

L dropped a sugar cube into his mouth. His stomach stopped complaining, eventually.

---

Light huddled in the corner of his bed, hand twitching underneath his pillow, palm covering protectively a thin, black notebook. He wanted it next to him-- he didn't want it there. Light wanted to hide it-- he didn't want to hide it, he wanted to see it. Yagami Light, son of Yagami Souichirou, wanted to discard the cursed thing; no, he didn't.

An unintelligible noise escaped from his throat, and Light pulled his blanket over his head, blocking out the brightness in his room. He couldn't sleep like this. But his breathing became muffled and hot, and warmth pressed down upon the skin that felt stretched, and tired, so Light created a little gap by his ear, irritated when artificial light burned his eyes.

The tension he noticed only when the tendons in his neck froze up and had him wincing whenever he turned his head. It had taken less than a second for Light Yagami to recognize the pain in his limbs as an offset of horror; a few seconds later, he added guilt, fear, disgust, hatred, and panic to the mix, and shut his eyes, trying to breathe evenly. He didn't care about the dead people. They were strangers. No, it was knowing that he was now a _murderer_ that hurt him, and his entire concept of justice and morals came to bruise him between his ribs.

He ached.

The lights were on because they comforted. Light had never been afraid of the dark, and the dark didn't scare him now. He simply did not like it, for it made him uneasy, and the thoughts in his head would turn to wilder and more sinister things, artsy, faceless portraits laced with dread that had his heart pumping and awake. The bright lights kept his bedroom feeling like a _bedroom_, with walls that kept him safe, kept him inside, unlike shadows that stretched on without end, connecting and pressing beyond the dimensions of this reality.

The only problem was, Light could not sleep with such glaring intensity pressing upon him in every possible location. He was curled in the fetal position, forehead nearly meeting his knees, elbows tucked tightly into his chest. His right hand quivered stiffly over the cover of the book, caught between possessiveness and repulsion. Light sighed as he shifted his body and noticed greasiness in his hair.

Light tossed and turned, tossed and turned, always hunched, always making sure he could touch the smooth, wrinkle-less cover of the Death Note.

It was like this for several nights.

Light woke in the mornings with bleary eyes and hollows under them. He went through his studies with lethargy, hating, more than ever, the fact that they weren't challenging, pining for something confusing to focus on, to command his frazzled nerves. Light was very quiet, brooding, unseeing, anxious-anxious-anxious, and would walk faster than necessary between classes, as if he was afraid of being late or getting lost.

The lights stayed on in his room. Sayu looked in the second evening, and he had the presence of mind to roll onto his stomach and read a textbook. He focused on memorizing one line at the beginning. But he never remembered what the sentence said, in its entirety. He focused only on the first three words: "The Law of…"

Then, the third morning, his father told him over the breakfast table (amid undisguised disapproval from his mother and sighs from his sister), wearily, about a freak that attacked his wife and injured his children to the point of hospitalization.

Something within Light boiled.

It was scornfully easy to erase the trepidation, decorate and re-structure his thought process to something that required less energy and was more optimistic. _This world needs saving. _ It felt as though the idea had been clear in the corners of his sharp mind, already, unnoticed. Light felt his insides become hollow, and a chill ran down his spine as he stared at his father.

_The crime; it never ends. The world will not learn_, Light's father sighed.

His fingertips shook as he creaked the cover of the Death Note open, and gravely, he uncapped a ballpoint pen. He was very still as he observed the television, which cast light on the shadows behind him, and created ghosts of light on the ceiling. Light mentally filtered each news report into a category, and began to memorize names.

That night, Light felt somehow ancient. He huddled in the corner of his bed, hand still twitching underneath his pillow, palm again covering protectively a thin, black notebook. It occurred to him that he should place it somewhere else, somewhere safe-- no, he couldn't. Light curled painfully into himself, trembling.

_A world without crime… what could be better? What could?_

Light tasted self-arrogance. He'd been able to outsmart this malicious object of evil and make it virtuous. Oh, brilliant.

Light shivered. He turned away from the wall, then reverted back, groaning, as light shone red through his eyelids.

It got better, after a while.

Light finally drifted off to unsatisfying sleep filled with penalties and retribution, but not before he flicked off the lights, and wrapped himself, cowering, beneath the covers.


End file.
